Palm-oil tanker stabilised off India after engine failure and ballast flooding

Verified facts. On 27 September, the Belize-flagged MT Seagull 9, carrying 9,000 metric tonnes of palm oil and 23 crew members, issued a distress call about 37 nautical miles east-south-east of Paradip, Odisha. India’s Ministry of Defence said the vessel had suffered main-engine failure and rapid flooding of a ballast tank, producing a dangerous list.

The Indian Coast Guard deployed ICGS Vishwast. Its damage-control team boarded the vessel, used submersible de-flooding pumps, stopped the leakage, blanked two damaged seawater pipelines and contained a third fractured line. The Coast Guard also diverted a pollution-control vessel and an offshore patrol vessel, while a Dornier aircraft conducted aerial surveillance. Authorities reported that a minor palm-oil sheen seen on 27 September had dissipated by follow-up flights on 28 September. After stabilisation, the Paradip Port Authority tug Dolphin towed the tanker towards the Paradip anchorage; the Coast Guard said its assets remained on scene to support and monitor the vessel.

Independent reporting by Indian media matched the official account on the location, cargo quantity, crew number, machinery failure, ballast flooding and towage. Neither the official release nor the corroborating reports establish cargo damage, cargo loss, a final cause of the machinery failure, or the condition of the cargo tanks. Those matters should therefore remain open pending technical inspection, survey and any relevant investigation.

Why this matters. A casualty can become a cargo claim before any cargo is discharged or visibly damaged. Here, the immediate priorities were vessel stability, containment and pollution surveillance. The next claims-critical phase is evidential: preserve bridge and engine-room logs, alarm and trend data, ballast soundings, defect and repair records, photographs or video of damaged pipework, towage records, and communications with the port, charterers, cargo interests and insurers. Custody of those records should be controlled, with original electronic data retained in a forensically defensible form.

For cargo interests, survey instructions should distinguish between the condition of cargo, tanks, pipelines and any transfer operation. If palm oil is transferred, parties should record tank identifications, quantities, temperatures where relevant, sampling protocol, seals, pumping times, receiving-tank condition and reconciliation figures. Masters and operators should also avoid premature causation statements: factual contemporaneous records, clear reservations and coordinated surveys are more valuable than early conclusions.

The incident is a useful reminder that combined machinery and flooding events require parallel workstreams: stabilise the ship, protect the marine environment, protect cargo, and preserve the evidence needed to allocate loss and mitigation costs fairly.